Part 2

“Oh! I don’t know,” he said. “If that boat was your best chance, it was a slim one. Never mind, Jackson; take comfort from me. Nobody doomed to hang was ever drowned. I’ll send you home to your wife and babies yet--I suppose you have a wife and babies; people like you always do.”

“Here! Don’t you take my wife’s name on your lips!”

“Look! I thought so.”

The boat, poised for an instant on the crest of a great wave, suddenly lunged forward, raced madly down a watery slope, and thrust its nose deep into an opposite swelling wave. It did not come up. Long did the two men on the steamer watch, but nothing, living or dead, appeared amid the heaving waves.

At last Howard’s tense features relaxed.

“Well,” he remarked, carelessly. “That’s a mark to my credit, anyhow. I’ve saved your life, Jackson. Please see that you do me no discredit in the ten minutes that you will retain it.”

The other glared at him stupidly.

“Susan didn’t want me to come,” he mumbled. “She said I’d never come back----”

His voice died away into incoherent murmurs.

Howard looked at the man, and his lip curled contemptuously. He said nothing, however, but turned in silence toward where the boat had sunk.

The next instant he started and glanced swiftly around him. His eyes fell on a life-preserver lodged in the broken doorway by the last wave that had retreated from his feet. He snatched it up and buckled it round him; then fastened one end of a rope beneath his arms and thrust the other into the hands of the stupefied officer.

“There! Wake up, man!” he ordered. “Wake up and stand by!”

Jackson stared at him. “Where? What? How?” he mumbled.

“Wake up, man! Don’t you see it’s a woman?”

As he saw the returning intelligence dawn in Jackson’s eyes, Howard slipped to the toppling brink of the bulwarks and stood watching for the next heave of the sea. As it came, with a white rag sopping foolishly on its crest, he waved his hand to the other.

“Give my love to Susan!” he cried, and plunged downward.

Chaos! The sea into which he dived was without form and void. Like a grain of corn in a popper, he was tossed hither and thither, twisted, wrenched at--all sense of direction stripped from him.

There was not one chance in a thousand that he would reach the woman; not one in a million that he could give her the least help if he did reach her; the very attempt became preposterous the moment he touched the water. Only blind chance could avail.

The incredible happened. His arm, striking out, caught the girl fairly round the waist and fastened there. He did not try to get back to the ship; he made no reasoned effort at all; reason was impossible in that turmoil.

He struggled, no doubt, but the struggle was unconscious--a mere automatic battle for life. But he clung to the woman, gasping, with oblivion pressing hard upon his reeling brain.

Something seemed to grasp him around the waist and drag him backward, and unconsciously he tightened his arm on the waist he held, meeting the wrench as the sea withdrew its support.

Crash! Something had struck him cruelly, but struck realization back into his brain. Before he could act, the sea swelled around him again; but when it withdrew once more, he knew what had happened. Jackson was dragging him back to the wreck, and he had struck against its side or on its submerged deck.

It was the deck! By favor of Providence it was the deck! Aided by the drag of the rope, the last wave washed Howard and his prize almost to the feet of the police officer, who braced himself to withstand the backtow as the water retreated; then reached down and dragged both up to momentary safety.

Howard opened his eyes for one instant.

“Didn’t I tell you I would have a drier death on shore?” he gasped before unconsciousness claimed him.

IV

CONSCIOUSNESS came slowly back to Frank Howard. He raised his head, but otherwise lay still, painfully reconstructing the world around him. So tightly was he wedged between a broken ventilator and a skylight coamings that it was only with considerable difficulty that he finally managed to lift himself to a sitting position and stare dizzily around.

He was alone on the deck, which had become much steeper than he remembered it in the gray dawn. Evidently another bulkhead forward had given way, allowing another compartment to become filled with water and causing the bow of the steamer to sink deeper.

In compensation the stern had risen somewhat higher, so that the waves broke against the deck, but no longer rushed violently up it. The sea, too, had gone down, curbed perhaps by the thick mantle of yellow weed that floated all about.

With much difficulty he scrambled to his feet, clinging desperately the while to the ventilator.

“Steady! Steady!” he muttered. “If I tobogganed down into that water I shouldn’t get up again in a hurry.” He held out his hand and noted its tremulousness. “By Jove! I’m weak as a cat.”

Rapidly his brain grew clearer. Ship and sea and sky ceased their momentary whirlings and settled into their proper places. He looked up at the zenith, to which the sun, though still veiled, had indubitably climbed.

“Six hours at least,” he soliloquized. “Heavens, I must have been pounded hard to lie unconscious for that long! If the old tub has floated six hours she may float indefinitely. But----”

He stared curiously around him. As far as his eye could reach stretched the yellow gulf-weed, blanketing the blue of the sea. So thick was it that it held the Queen comparatively stationary, despite the strong breeze that pressed against her.

Howard uttered a cry of dismay.

“The Sargasso Sea,” he groaned. “We’re inside it--far inside it. Great Scott!” His brain reeled again. “Where the deuce is Jackson?” he muttered irritably. “And where’s that woman?”

Pat to the moment, Jackson thrust his head out of the doorway of the social hall. His dark face was pallid now, and he glared around him wildly. When he saw Howard standing, his expression brightened.

“So you’re alive,” he rumbled, surlily. “It takes a devil of a lot to kill some people.”

Howard stared at the man curiously. It was hardly the way he had expected to be greeted.

“Yes,” he answered, slowly, “it takes a good deal--sometimes. It didn’t take much for those poor devils in that boat you wanted to go in. Where’s the girl?”

Jackson jerked his hand over his right shoulder.

“She’s in there,” he responded. Then he hesitated for an instant. “It was a brave thing you did,” he finished, grudgingly.

Howard shrugged his shoulders.

“Merely a choice of deaths,” he answered. “I expected the ship to sink any minute, and, personally, I preferred to die fighting. How is she?”

“She’s breathing, but that’s all. She hasn’t moved since I got her aboard.”

“No wonder. She really hasn’t any right to be alive after what she went through. Have you done anything for her?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I took her into the social hall and laid her on the sofa and got some whiskey for her, but I couldn’t get her to take it, and she looked so horrible and----” He paused, evidently shaken.

Howard stretched up his hand.

“I must see her,” he declared. “I’m pretty shaky still, but if you’ll give me a lift I’ll try to scramble up beside you and then we’ll see what we can do.” He took the hand that Jackson offered. “Now brace yourself,” he warned. “All set?”

Jackson nodded, and Howard, after an experimental tug or two, put forth all his strength and drew himself up to the other’s side.

“That’s good,” he remarked. “I guess we’re both worth a dozen dead men yet. By the way, how did you get the girl up here?”

Jackson showed more animation than he had yet done.

“The deck wasn’t so steep when I moved her,” he explained. “It tilted worse just as I got her inside. I thought at first we were going down, but we didn’t.”

Howard stepped inside the social hall--which had never before so belied its name--and looked around him. After the bright light of the deck, the room seemed dark, and for a moment he could see nothing. Then he caught a glimpse of something lying on the big athwartship sofa, and scrambled over to it.

A girl lay there in a crumpled heap. In her rich golden brown hair alone was any touch of color. Her eyes were closed and her lips blue. Her cheeks were so bloodless that it seemed impossible that she still lived.

Once she might have been pretty--even beautiful--but the sea had robbed her of all charm, leaving only the pitifulness of youth and womanhood. Howard drew a long breath as he looked at her, and a sudden rage rose within him. She should not die! He had torn her from the sea. She should not die!

Fragmentary ideas as to the proper thing to do came back to him. He bent down, chafing her wrists and temples; and then, raising her head, touched Jackson’s bottle to her lips. A long, shuddering sigh shook the girl’s body, and Howard saw a pair of brown eyes open and stare up at him; then close wearily. Again he raised her head. “Drink,” he commanded, as he poured the spirit between her parted lips.

As the strangling liquor went down, the eyes flashed open again, and the girl shook from head to foot with a coughing--so violent and so prolonged that Howard feared that he had overdone his task.

But it soon passed, leaving her conscious.

For a moment she lay still, vaguely puzzling over her situation. Then recollection returned with a jerk, and she sat up.

“I remember,” she gasped. “Oh, that dreadful wave! To see it come down, down, down---- Where am I?”

“You’re back on the Queen. It’s all right. Try to keep cool. You’ll be better in a moment.”

The wonder grew in the girl’s eyes. “The Queen!” she murmured. “The--Queen! How did I get back?”

“The waves washed you back and we managed to pull you on board. You had better rest a while. You have been unconscious a long time.”

The girl looked from one to the other.

“Thank you! Thank you both,” she murmured. “I can’t find words now, but--the others! Were any of them----?” Her lips moved, but no sound followed.

Howard bowed his head, but he answered unflinchingly--better the clean, sharp cut of certainty than dragging suspense.

“You were the only one in your boat who was saved,” he answered quietly. “I know nothing of the other boats.”

The girl covered her face with her hands. “Oh, poor people!” she moaned. “Poor, poor people!” Then she dashed the tears from her eyes and dragged herself to her feet, holding fast to the back of the sofa.

“I am Miss Dorothy Fairfax,” she said, with a pretty access of dignity. “And you?” Her eye traveled from one man to the other.

If Howard hesitated, it was for so short a time that it passed unobserved.

“This is Detective Jackson, of the New York police,” he answered steadily, “and I am Frank Howard, his prisoner.”

“Frank Howard! Not--not----”

“Yes.”

“My God!” For the first time in her life, Dorothy Fairfax fainted dead away.

V

AS Dorothy fell Howard caught her in his arms and laid her upon the sofa. Then he faced Jackson.

“Nice thing, this!” he remarked, grimly. “A very nice thing, considering the state of affairs. No!” he interjected, as he saw Jackson’s eyes wander to the girl. “Don’t worry about her just now. She’s exhausted, anyway, and she’ll sleep it off and be all the better when she rouses. Meanwhile, there’s work for us. We all need food, and it’s imperative that we should find some at once. Come.”

The angle of the ship’s deck made examination both difficult and dangerous; but when, by the exercise of care, it had been safely carried out, it was evident that the voyagers need not fear either starvation or thirst for a long time to come. The store-rooms of the Queen were above, though only just above, the new waterline, and in them there was food for months to come.

It was good food, too, intended for the consumption of passengers who paid well. In addition to canned goods, of which the stock was large and varied, there was a quantity of ice and fresh meat, fresh vegetables, flour, biscuits, sauces, breakfast foods, and so forth, to say nothing of wines, liquors, and tobacco.

With water the ship was equally well supplied. Not only was the saloon scuttle-butt full, but, after some search, Howard found two large tanks whose contents had not even been touched. In the pantry, just forward of the saloon, was a refrigerator with cooked food enough for two or three days.

All these things were not found in an instant. As it chanced, the pantry came last; and the moment the cooked food was discovered, further investigation was promptly suspended and preparations made to comfort the inner man. A plentiful supply was quickly transferred to the big saloon-table, where it was held in place by the fiddles, which had been put on the night before at dinner and had not been removed.

Leaving Jackson to brew the coffee, an art in which he asserted that he was proficient, Howard went to see after Miss Fairfax.

As he had expected, he found her sleeping, her swoon having quietly passed into slumber. A little color had come back to her cheeks and to her lips, and her breathing was regular.

For several moments he stood looking down at her, noting the sweep of her long lashes on her cheeks, the delicate penciling of her eyebrows, and the pure curve of her parted lips. She was of his own class in life and---- He checked his thoughts shortly.

From this girl and all connected with her he had been cut off by his trial and his sentence. Had it not been for the storm and the wreck, he would never have spoken to one of her kind again.

Suddenly he realized that her eyes were open and that she was regarding him curiously. The next instant she blushed furiously and struggled to her feet. Howard did not offer to help her; he did not dare to.

“Oh!” she begged. “Please forgive me.”

Howard mumbled something indistinct. He was too much surprised to speak clearly. Miss Fairfax, however, did not accept his presumably polite disclaimer.

“No, but really,” she reiterated, “I owe you an apology. It was very silly of me to faint. I was exhausted, and the discovery----”

“The discovery that you were alone at sea with a detective and a convicted murderer appalled you--as well it might. Do not blame yourself, Miss Fairfax, and do not think that I am sensitive. No man can go through an experience such as mine and fail to have his cuticle thickened. Give yourself no uneasiness about me.”

Dorothy began to reply, when suddenly the dinner-gong rang out imperatively.

“What’s that?” she gasped.

Howard smiled. “That’s Jackson,” he explained, “and he’s hungry. Will you come to dinner?”

But Dorothy did not come to dinner at once. When she did, ten minutes later, after a visit to her state-room, which luckily was far aft and consequently above water, Howard noted with amused surprise that in those few minutes she had managed to bind up her tangled hair and change her dress for another. She glanced at the table as she approached and flushed at Jackson’s glum looks.

“Oh!” she cried. “Why did you wait? I told you not to.” She slipped into her seat. “I’m so hungry!” she sighed.

The hot coffee and the abundant meal lightened the spirits of the trio in spite of the predicament in which they found themselves. With a ship, albeit a crippled one, under their feet and with plenty of food and water at hand, it was not in human nature to despair, especially as the sea had gone down so much that it no longer threatened them.

To both Jackson and Miss Fairfax the worst seemed to be over; in a day or two some one would pick them up, they thought, and all would be well. Howard alone, wiser in the ways of the sea, doubted. He listened to the others’ hopeful prognostications, but said little.

“I must study the situation before I can say anything,” was as far as he would commit himself, even in answer to a direct question.

When they had finished their meal, Dorothy rose.

“I’ll clear away these dishes,” she announced. “I’m sure you two have more important things to attend to. Later, when Mr. Howard has studied the situation, as he wishes, we will hold a council of war.”

Howard bowed and went on deck. His first glance assured him that his worst fears were true. The Queen was evidently far within the Sargasso Sea, and under the impulse of a strong breeze from the west was steadily driving eastward, into ever-thickening fields of weeds.

Wreckage was floating here and there, mute evidence of disasters that had occurred, perhaps close at hand, perhaps thousands of miles away. The passages of open water that had trellised the sea an hour before had disappeared, and with them had gone whatever faint hope Howard might have had of rescue.

No skipper would venture into that tangle; no boat could move through it; almost it seemed that one could walk on it; yet Howard knew that any one trusting to that deceptive firmness would drown, and drown without even a chance to swim. The weeds would coil round him, soft, slimy, but strong, and drag him down.

Like all who have sailed these waters, Howard had heard many tales of the great Sargasso Sea, and had whiled away many an hour listening to the sailors’ yarns of the haven of dead ships buried far within those tangled confines--a haven in the middle of the ocean, a haven without a harbor, a haven where the ships, dropping to pieces at last by slow decay, must sink for two miles or more before they reached the floor of the ocean.

And into this haven the Queen was drifting, slowly but surely. Nothing but sinking could prevent her from moving onward till she reached the innermost haven.

What would it be like? he wondered. Would the wrecks really be crowded together so that one could pass from one to the other? That there had been plenty of them borne in to make a very continent of ships he did not doubt, but had they floated long enough to accumulate to any great extent?

The sailors declared that the sea was as large as Europe; that the weed was impenetrable over an area larger than France; that there might well be an area of massed wreckage two or three hundred miles in diameter. But these were sailors’ tales. Would they prove true?

“Well?”

Howard turned around. Dorothy and Jackson had come up behind him and were staring curiously over the weedy sea. “Well?” reiterated the latter.

Howard hesitated.

“I fear it is not well,” he answered at last. “Our chances of escape for the present seem practically nil.”

Miss Fairfax paled, but Jackson flushed darkly.

“What are you givin’ us?” he demanded, roughly. “The ship ain’t going to sink, is she?”

“No. That is not the danger. Look around you.” He waved his hand to the weed-strewn horizon.

Jackson looked again. “Well! What of it?” he demanded.

“This! You see how thick the weed is--thicker even than it was an hour ago. I’ve sailed these seas long enough to know what that means. It means that we have been blown a long way inside the Sargasso Sea.”

“No ships come here; sailing ships would lose nearly all their speed, and steamers would lose all of it, for their screws would soon be hopelessly fouled. No vessel will come to rescue us. If we are ever to leave the Queen, it must be by our own efforts.”

“What can we do?” asked Dorothy, quietly.

“That is it exactly. What _can_ we do? Frankly, I don’t see that we can do anything at present. We have no boats, and nothing but a boat, and a sharp-edged one at that, could make any way through this morass. And every minute we are getting deeper in. The current below catches our sunken bow, and the wind above catches our uplifted stern, and both sweep us eastward--toward the center of the weed. If we took to a raft we would move much more slowly--but we would starve much more quickly--and our chances of being picked up would not be improved.”

“But what will become of us?”

“I don’t know. It seems likely that we will be swept into the center of the sea, where there are supposed to be thousands of derelicts, the combings of the North Atlantic for four hundred years--I say ‘supposed’ because nobody has ever seen them, but there isn’t much doubt about it.”

Jackson laughed scornfully.

“What are you givin’ us?” he demanded incredulously.

Dorothy turned to him.

“It’s all true,” she corroborated, with a catch in her voice. “Only yesterday Mr. Sprigg told me about it. He was wishing for a chance to explore the place, poor fellow. And now----” She broke off and turned to Howard. “Isn’t there any chance at all of our being picked up?” she asked.

Howard shook his head.

“None, I fear,” he answered, gently. “I am sorry, Miss Fairfax, more sorry than I can say; but I fear we shall be on this wreck or on another for weeks and months to come. So far as I can see now we can do nothing till we reach the central wreckage. There we may find a boat or the tools to build one--ours are far under water--or some other way to escape.”

“It will be desperately hard to wait; to drift deeper and deeper into this tangle day after day, hoping that things will change when they come to the worst; but it’s all we can do. Meanwhile we can thank God that we have food, drink, and comfortable shelter, and we are on our way to see what no one has ever seen before and returned to tell it. Let’s make the best of it.”

“The best of it!” Jackson’s face was flushed and his eyes distended. “The best of it!” he vociferated. “By Heaven, it’s well for you to yap! You’re all right here. You’re safe from the electric chair here. You can afford to wait and wait. But how about us? How about me? How about my wife and children?”

“It’s hard,” Howard assented. “It’s bitter hard, but----”

“Bah! You’re lying to us! You’re a sailor and can get us out of this, if you will. You don’t want to get out. You hope that you’ll get a chance to escape, but, by Heaven, you shan’t! I’ll kill you first! By God, I will!”

“It’s your duty to do so!” Howard spoke quietly, but a spot of red glowed on each cheek. “It is your duty to kill me rather than let me escape. But it is not your duty to insult me. I permit no man to do that, and I warn you not to repeat your offense.

“For the rest, Miss Fairfax, there is some reason in what this man says. The catastrophe which has brought death to so many, and suffering, both past and future, to you, has saved me. I am safe from the electric chair. Anywhere else in the wide world I would have to shrink from every casual glance; would have to lie in answer to every wanton question. But no extradition runs to the heart of the Sargasso Sea. So it might seem natural that I should wish to stay here. In so far, our excitable friend is right. But I give you my word of honor, not as a jailbird, but as the gentleman I once was, that I am even more anxious to get out of here than yourself. I have still a task to do in the world; my view is not entirely bounded by the electric chair. If any faintest chance offers for us to escape, be sure that I will seize it. But I am helpless until we reach the central wrecks and see what aid they have to offer. Then I will do what a man may.”

“I do not promise to go on to New York with Jackson, but I do promise to get you and him safely out of this place, if it is within my power to do so--and I believe it will be. Say that you believe me.”

It was impossible not to believe this clear-eyed, straight-spoken gentleman, convicted murderer though he were. Dorothy held out her hand.

“I believe you,” she said, “and I trust you.”

Howard looked at the hand doubtfully.

“That is not nominated in the bond,” he suggested.

“Then we’ll put it in,” returned the girl. “As for what you have done in the past--I have forgotten it. We will all forget it--till then.”

“So be it--till then!”

The hands of the two met. But Jackson, standing aside, grunted scornfully.

“I’ll not forget it,” he growled. “Not for a single minute; not till I get you to New York. I’ve known your smooth-spoken sort before.”

VI